How the iPhone and Bad Decisions Killed BlackBerry ⇥ newyorker.com

Vauhini Vara, the *New Yorker:

BlackBerry, founded in 1984 by a pair of engineering students, Mike Lazaridis and Douglas Fregin, was for years one of the world’s most innovative builders of communications products like two-way pagers and e-mail devices. But the story of its past six years has been one of missed opportunities. First, the company failed to recognize that the iPhone could hurt it. Then it overlooked the threat of low-cost competitors in Asia. Finally, and most recently, executives threw the company’s little remaining energy into a new line of high-end smartphones that failed to resonate with consumers, having arrived far too late with too little to offer.

It is genuinely incredible that it took until this year for BlackBerry to release something in the vein of the iPhone or Android phones, with the Z10. It’s disappointing to see the tail end of the biggest splash any Canadian company has made on the technology scene.